Scent of the Slayer
by Aisuru1
Summary: *on hold* Spike realizes why The Slayer can't love him and decides to do something about it. Angel is involved (not a crossover, not slash).
1. Chapter 1

Spike could still smell her.  
  
Traces of the Slayer's scent had permeated the rubble that had once been his bedroom. The scent of her strength mingled with the heavy odor of detonated hand grenade. Whispered reminders of her arousal lingered with the smell of singed wool from the tatters of oriental rugs that now littered the floor in chaotic patterns. The scent of her anger and confusion mixed with the stench of rotting bits of exploded baby demons that Spike had yet to wash off the walls.  
  
Spike sat down on a less blown-up corner of the bed and closed his eyes, the scene replaying itself behind his eyelids.  
  
"I can't love you. I'm just using you."  
  
"Really not complaining, luv."  
  
"And it's killing me."  
  
The pain had surrounded them. He could hear it in her voice as she struggled for composure to resist him. He could feel it burning his throat as he tried to convince her to use him, to hurt him, but just not to leave him. He could see it in her eyes.  
  
"Goodbye, William."  
  
The depth of the pain in her eyes had surprised him. He found himself rooted in place as she turned and left him, walking into the sunlight where he could never follow.  
  
"And it's killing me."  
  
In retrospect, Spike believed her. She was, in fact, dying inside.  
  
Spike had seen her eyes when her mother spent the night at the hospital for testing, the night he had thought about killing her but had comforted her instead. He had seen her eyes when her mother had died after a supposed recovery. He had seen her eyes when Dawn had been kidnapped by Glory. He had seen her eyes when memories of the heaven she had been ripped from were haunting her afresh.  
  
But he had never seen her eyes hold so much pain as when she spoke those words.  
  
"I can't love you. I'm just using you."  
  
"I can't love you."  
  
".can't love you."  
  
"I can't love..."  
  
".can't love..."  
  
He had once asked her why she couldn't love him. She had spouted off some nonsense about him being evil and disgusting and she couldn't trust him. It was nonsense. She had trusted him enough to leave her mother and sister in his care. She hadn't found him disgusting when she kissed him and threw him to the ground, or against the wall, or against a tree trunk, and lavished her attentions on his body, heating him with her warmth. She hadn't thought him evil enough to warrant retracting his invitation to her home when he first discovered that the government chip was ineffective against her.  
  
"I can't love..."  
  
The Slayer loved her sister. The Slayer loved Giles, and Willow, and Xander. A part of the Slayer still loved Angel.  
  
"I can't love..."  
  
But she had never loved Riley.  
  
"I can't love you."  
  
And she couldn't love him.  
  
".can't love..."  
  
A part of the Slayer still loved Angel.  
  
Spike's eyes widened in realization before narrowing in anger.  
  
Spike could still smell her.  
  
Paying more attention, Spike followed the scent. She had left a little sweat on the ladder leading to the upper level of his crypt, left when escaping the hatching demons. She had felt betrayed by his un-Scooby behavior, and the scent of her anger and confusion lingered.  
  
The scent of her arousal and their subsequent sex play had infused into the oriental rugs. Spike vaguely wondered if he would ever be able to discard the ruined floor coverings if they maintained her scent.  
  
He smelled the strength of her Slayer blood, painfully obvious to any vampire, but being so often surrounded by the scent he had stopped paying attention for reasons of sanity. In a corner, Spike found a scrap of cloth that he had once used to wrap her ribs after a fight with some troublesome demons. A drop of her blood had dried into the weave of the fabric.  
  
He smelled her blood carefully and thoroughly, effectively blocking out the scents of grenade explosion, singed wool, rotting demon parts, and even the other scents the Slayer had left behind. He focused on the blood, and he found it - the scent of his Sire's claim.  
  
"I can't love you. And it's killing me."  
  
Spike was going to pay his Sire a visit. 


	2. Chapter 2

Spike stood in the deeper shadows under a tree, watching the Slayer's window. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and occasionally tendrils of smoke escaped with his breath, unnecessary for existence but a requirement for smoking. Otherwise he was unnaturally still. 

Her bedroom light was out for over an hour before the sounds of her breathing and heartbeat indicated that she was finally asleep. The cigarette dropped to the dirt at the roots of the tree, crushed moments later by Spike's booted heel. In a sudden blur of black leather and platinum hair he leapt to the roof over the porch and entered her open window. Moving air rustled the curtains as he moved, but he was otherwise silent. 

He approached her bed then, cautious reverence replacing his normal swagger and posturing. She slept curled on her side, facing him. The hazel eyes, so troubled since her return from the grave, were closed, her smoky eyelashes resting softly on her cheeks. Her mouth was soft, relaxed in a sexy pout. Her cropped blond hair fanned out on her pillow. Tendrils of it covering the scars of fang marks on her neck. 

__

"I can't love you. I'm just using you."

__

"Really not complaining, luv."

__

"And it's killing me."

When Spike sat on the edge of the bed she stirred, but Spike was ready. "Be in me," he murmured silkily as her eyes fluttered open. The Slayer was immediately still, her eyes staring vacantly ahead, her mind opened to his any suggestion. A part of Spike, the part that still longed for the thrill and violence of the hunt, rejoiced at having such power over the Slayer. The rest of him, the part that loved the Slayer more than the hunt, was appalled that Angel would leave her so vulnerable to any of the Master's line.

Spike allowed himself a moment to be close to the Slayer as she would never allow it. He gently stroked his fingers over her face, tenderly brushing them through the silky strands of her hair. She didn't push him away, but she didn't respond either. "Why did you cut your beautiful hair?" he asked, more to himself than to her.

"You called me Goldilocks." She answered the question obediently and without reservation. 

Spike refused to allow himself to dwell on the painful fact that she cut her hair because he had expressed a fondness for it. Instead, knowing now that he would answer any questions in complete honesty, he chose to look into more important concerns. He again stroked his fingers through her hair, this time revealing the scars over the pulse of her throat. "When were you claimed?" he asked her, keeping his voice soothing and hypnotic.

"What do you mean?" she asked in response.

'It is no wonder the Slayers die so young, if this is the extent of their training on vampires,' he thought. If she didn't know what a claiming was, he would just have to rephrase the question. "When did my Sire bite you?" he asked.

"Drusilla never bit me," she answered simply.

Again Spike was surprised by her lack of knowledge. Then Angel had never told her... No, of course he hadn't. As far as Spike could gather, the souled Angel tried his best to pretend he wasn't a vampire at all. Telling her stories about his colorful past as Angelus would have never won her affections, or her love.

"Sweet, twisted Drusilla," Spike muttered. "She saw something in me that none of my contemporaries could see. She said that I walked in worlds that others couldn't even begin to imagine. She said she could give me something eternal, and she tried to bring me into her world." He paused then. "Let me stress the word tried. You see, luv, when you change someone, the amount of blood you take is very important. You have to drain enough blood that the physical body is doomed to die, but you have to leave enough blood so the mortal doesn't die before the gift of vampire blood. Drusilla had tried to turn a few children before -- she always killed them on accident -- and she usually fed on children, the younger the better, so she misjudged the amount of blood a full-grown man would have. She under-drained me, and I hadn't yet reached the point of blood lust when she tried to feed me from her torn wrist. When Angelus found us in that alley, I was going into shock from blood loss and gagging in disgust on the cold vampire blood she was trying to feed me."

__

Angelus watched in deranged amusement as Drusilla tried, once again, to force the struggling young man to drink from her. The man was lying on the cobblestones of the alley, held in place by Drusilla's hand on his throat. She had torn her other wrist with her fangs and held it over he man's face. Instead of drinking desperately from her wrist as she had anticipated, he was weakly trying to turn his face away from the stream of vampire blood. It streaked his face and matted in the unruly curls of his hair. 

Only when Drusilla sank woozily to her knees and began to cry in frustration did Angelus make his presence known. He approached her with a casual control that contrasted her disorder. "You shouldn't be making childer," he chided his own childe in a gentle, mocking tone. "Aren't you happy with your dolls?"

"Oh, my Angel," she cooed, brushing her tears away with the hand that wasn't holding the man to the ground. She smeared her own blood across her face in the process. "The stars told me I could have this one. Please, Angelus, I want this one."

Angelus shook his head sadly, wondering not for the first time if he had driven Drusilla a bit too mad before changing her. She was paying the gash on her wrist no mind, and was no doubt weakening herself yet again. 

"Don't cry, Princess," he said as he knelt next to her, mindful to avoid getting blood on his own fine clothing. "Daddy will fix this." 

Angelus slowly waved his hand in front of the young man's face, stifling an amused chuckle when the man struggled to focus his eyes. "Oh, Drusilla," Angelus scolded softly, "This one is still lucid." Angelus was further amused when Drusilla seemed surprised by this fact. "You've spilled so much of your blood on him already..." Angelus took Drusilla's bleeding wrist between his hands and licked at the blood that trailed down her arm. He used his own saliva to slow the bleeding before she was overly weakened. "Do you want Daddy to turn him for you?" he finally asked her.

Drusilla pouted. "I want him to be mine!" she complained.

"Daddy will give him to you," Angelus answered. Angelus hoped his own Sire would not be too infuriated at him bringing across yet another incompetent, but it was hard to refuse Drusilla. Angelus roughly hauled the young man up by the lapels, sinking his teeth into his neck over Drusilla's bite marks. He drained him quickly and effectively, not bothering with the euphoria traditionally given to one that was to be brought over. When he finally slashed his own wrist and offered it to the man the blood lust had taken hold of him, and he gripped the offered wrist with both hands, drinking fiercely. Angelus then offered his other wrist to his childe Drusilla. She drank from her Sire greedily, regaining some of the strength she had lost in the botched changing. 

Angelus was cautious to maintain his own strength, and he pushed the two away before either was satisfied. Drusilla looked up at him in anguish, wanting more of her Sire's blood, but Angelus redirected her attention to the man, dying and driven mad by unfulfilled blood lust. "It is your turn to feed him, princess," he explained as he licked the wounds on his own wrists, stopping the flow of blood.

Spike decided not to give the Slayer these intimate details of his changing, unsure how much of their conversation she would remember. He turned his attention away from his memories and back to the enthralled girl before him. "Angelus helped Drusilla turn me," he told her instead, "so in a way they are both my Sires." In truth, Spike noted to himself, while he had cherished Drusilla and was unable to deny her anything, he had never deferred to her as one defers to ones Sire. She had also never treated him like her chile. On the few occasions when he had been allowed to drink from Angelus, however, he had felt the rush of power and desperation for connection that occurred with ones true Sire. This connection had never been fulfilled, as Angelus had never drunk from him in return. 'And may he be damned twice for that,' he thought bitterly before returning his attention, once again, to his task.

"When did Angelus bite you?" he then asked the enthralled Slayer, lightly running his finger over the scar at her throat.

"Angelus never bit me," she answered. Spike's mind swirled with confusion before she continued: "Angel bit me."

"Okay," he encouraged her to continue. "When did Angel bite you?"

"When I hit him and told him to bite me," she answered.

Prodded on by Spike's questioning, she narrated the events preceding graduation and the Mayor's ascension. From her own mouth he learned that she had tried to kill Faith to use her Slayer blood as the antidote to the poison Faith had used on Angel. When that failed, she had offered her own life blood to Angel. When he refused, she hit him, bringing forth his demon nature, and in his poison-induced delirium Angel drank. Spike's temper grew steadily as she spoke, although his voice stayed soothing and hypnotic. 'That bloody, bloody bastard!' he thought. 'She risked her life to save him, and this is how he repays her?'

When she had related the story, Spike kissed her tenderly on the forehead. "Close your eyes now and go to sleep," he murmured. "When you awaken in the morning your free will shall be restored, and this will all seem but a dream." He started towards the window before adding, "I'll be leaving Sunnyhell for a few days, but don't concern yourself with my absence. I intend to come back, but if I don't, remember always that I love you." With these words, he was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Angel was dreaming. 

In the dream Angel, soul intact, watched in horror as Angelus' fangs broke the tender skin of a beautiful gypsy girl. Angel was both disgusted and delighted by the remembered taste of the blood that flowed into his mouth and down his throat. The girl's heritage of gypsy magic mingled with the heady taste of her fear and, more delightful to Angelus, the taste of her surrender. He had tormented her for months, brutally killing someone precious to her on the first night of each full moon: her mother, her younger sisters, and finally the young man in whose arms she had sought comfort. When Angelus finally drained this girl, there was no fight left in her.

The dream took a turn as the taste of the gypsy's blood morphed into the powerful blood of the Slayer. This blood was also surrendered without a fight, but this surrender was heavily seasoned with the girl's love for him; the fear in this blood was fear not of him but for him. It was now Angel that drank deeply, pulling the healing elixir from the girl's body and into his own. Only when her pulse began to weaken did he hear the anguished whispering of his soul crying out on behalf of its mate. Suddenly aware, he gently retracted his fangs, horrified to find that in his poisoned delirium he had torn her neck with the bite of a predator and not the bite of a lover. Anxious to repair the damage he bit into his own tongue, laving over the ravaged flesh with his own blood. "Don't leave me, you can't leave me!" he murmured desperately. "You are mine!"

Angel realized he was only dreaming when the scent of his childe overpowered the scent of Buffy's blood, which he now recognized as a real scent and not a fragment of the dream. His eyes shot open in time to see Spike's hand clamp down on his throat in a squeeze that threatened crushed bones. Spike's eyes glinted golden in his demon face, his words slightly garbled as he spoke through elongated fangs: "You claimed her, you bloody bastard! You claimed her and you left her!"

Acting on instincts alone, Angel raised his legs and kicked the younger vampire across the room. He let his own demon face surge forth as he jumped to his feet. "Are you sure you want to fight with me, boy?" he demanded, furious at being attacked in his sleep by one of his childer. 

"Dead-boy junior they call me," Spike hissed as he stood. "Always comparing me to you. 'Angel is different,' they say. 'Angel has a soul.' Well, f*ck that! Even with your soul you are more f*cked up than Dru on one of her child killing frenzies!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Angel asked as he approached his childe. Then he sniffed the air. "And why," he growled, "do you smell like Buffy?"

Spike let out a harsh laugh as Angel grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, slamming him against the wall. The sheet rock crumbled behind the wallpaper, and Spike could hear a wooden stud crack where his back hit it. "I know," he said, his voice dripping with resentment. "Dru noticed it first, you know. 'You are surrounded by her,' she told me." Spike motioned vaguely with his hands as well as one could when being held by the shoulders to a wall.

"To hell with Dru and her nonsensical ramblings," Angel said through his fangs, slamming Spike into the wall again for emphasis. "You smell of Buffy's blood and of her sex. Tell me why I shouldn't just kill you now and look for explanations later."

Spike laughed bitterly again, struggling to reach into the pocket of his duster. He pulled out the piece of cloth he had found in his crypt the day before. "Here is the blood you smell. Some nasty she was fighting during a routine patrol drew this blood. Actually, this little bit of blood is the reason I came to see you." Angel had dropped his gaze to the cloth, and Spike took advantage of the distraction to kick himself free. "Yeah, I smell like the Slayer," he said, advancing on Angel and punching him in the jaw. "Since Red brought her back from the dead..." he kicked Angel in the head, "the Slayer and I have been dancing..." he threw another punch at his Sire, "if you know what I mean." Spike kicked at Angel again, but this time Angel grabbed his leg, throwing the younger vampire roughly to the floor. Spike rolled to his feet.

There was a flurry of kicks and punches, too fast to be followed by the human eye, but when the blurring movement ceased Angel held Spike against the wall with one hand. With the other fist he pummeled the immobilized vampire. "What did you do, drug her? Chain her up in your crypt again? I think you just reached the end of your immortality, William!"

"Now, that's the funny part," Spike said weakly between blows. He tasted his own blood as he spoke. "She came to me willingly. She came again, and again, and again." Spike paused, the poet in him recognizing and enjoying the double meaning of that statement despite the haze of pain. 

"I don't believe you," Angel ground out, ceasing his attack to look at the battered childe that had dared to touch Buffy. "She could never love you."

"You're right," Spike said, his eyes softening to a sad ice blue as his demon retracted. His bloodied face looked all the more pitiful without the demon ridges. "She makes sure to declare her undying dislike of me after every shag. Slayer gets herself all worked up and comes to me for a little cold comfort. It isn't until after, when I try to cuddle up to her or make with the sweet talk, that she gets her panties all in a twist. She'll call me an evil monster and go through the whole bloody list of why she shouldn't be with me."

"Well, she's right. She shouldn't be with you," Angel growled.

"Yeah? Well, I start to notice this pattern to her post-shag tirades. She doesn't say 'I don't love you,' or 'I will never love you.' She always says, 'I can't love you.' Can't."

"So far this conversation isn't making me want to kill you any less," Angel cautioned, but his grip on Spike had loosened. It was hard to maintain anger when William looked so broken.

Spike's last conversation with the Slayer flashed before his eyes:

"I can't love you. I'm just using you."

"Really not complaining, luv."

"And it's killing me."

His eyes flashed yellow with renewed anger as he was reminded of the incredible pain in the Slayer's eyes. "You bloody, bloody bastard," Spike spat out. He shoved Angel away from him. "You claimed her, didn't you? I never noticed before because the scent of the Slayer's blood is so strong, you know, and I'm around her so much that I just try not to smell it or I'd just go crazy with the blood lust. And I knew you'd bitten her -- hell, that girl is a bloody vampire pin-cushion between you, the Master, and that poof Dracula -- but never in a thousand lifetimes would I have though that Angel, bloody soul and all, would be so low as to claim a girl as precious as Buffy and then leave her! Her blood smells like you!"

Angel, game face gone, took a step away from Spike. "But that's why I left her, so she could lead a normal life, so she wouldn't spend the rest of her life under my thrall."

Spike raged at his Sire, demon surging forth again. "Normal life my ass!" he yelled. "She's the f*cking Slayer! She'll spend her nights slaying demons in their various forms until it kills her. Hell, she's already died twice preventing apocalypses. What, you thought that you, a master vampire, could take her virginity, claim her, and leave her, and then -- poof -- she'll magically have a normal life?"

"I just thought..." Angel began.

"She was under your thrall before you even claimed her. She f*cking loved you, and you left her so she could, what, have the 9 to 5 job that conflicts with slaying hours, a loving human husband whose ribs she'll crush during passionate sex, and however many kids she can manage to carry to term as she's kicked in the gut by vampires on a weekly basis? She tried for that normal life, you know. She was with that Captain Cardboard initiative boy, and they shagged a lot and went on the missions together, but you know what? She couldn't love him. Granted, that relationship had an expiration date once he became normal guy, as he couldn't handle her being so much stronger than him, but even before that she couldn't love him. She couldn't f*cking love him because of your f*cking claim!"

"I never knew that..."

"And now she's found a fellow creature of the night that loves her with all of his unbeating heart, has given up live feedings entirely, has hours compatible with slaying, looks forward to the possibilities her flexibility and strength offer sex, and can't get her pregnant, and you know what? She can trust me with her family and friends, she can shag me until the roof falls down on us, but she can't love me! And it is all your fault!"

"I can't love you… And it's killing me."

Spike's face had the unusual combination of bloodied beaten demon face and falling tears by the time he finished his tirade. "Her death and journey to heaven didn't free her from your claim, Sire, and if I have to kill you to free her I will."


	4. Chapter 4

Angel blinked in surprise, not having considered that his claiming of Buffy had lasted through her death, journey to heaven, and her subsequent reincarnation. "Well, that's interesting," he mused.  
  
"You think the fact that I'm going to kill you is interesting?" Spike yelled, enraged at being mocked.  
  
"Um, what?" Angel asked, blinking again and looking at Spike. "Oh, ah, no. I think it is interesting that the claim survived her death."  
  
"Yeah? Well, love is eternal, you bloody bastard," Spike responded bitterly. A few moments later he sank to the floor, feeling utterly defeated. "Then killing you won't help either," he sulked.  
  
Angel also sat on the floor, leaning back against the wall. "Not that I'm offering, but I don't suppose it would."  
  
They sat for some time in silence, Spike feeling miserable that the Slayer would be emotionally trapped by Angel for an eternity, and Angel starting to brood that if only his soul was properly anchored to his body he could enjoy a lifetime of love with Buffy, and then, assuming he earned his redemption, an eternity joined with her in heaven. Night gave way to dawn, a bottle of Scotch was drunk between the two, and still silence reigned.  
  
Then Spike's eyes lit up. "Hey, maybe you could transfer your claim to, you know, your most favored childe?" he asked hopefully.  
  
Angel snorted. "Don't you think Drusilla would just kill her?" he asked.  
  
Spike jumped to his feet in explosive anger. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed before throwing the empty bottle at the wall across the room, watching it shatter.  
  
Angel sneered. "What, you meant you?" he asked his voice full of derision. "Even if you were my childe, you wouldn't be my favorite. I'm not so fond of you, and Angelus only put up with you to humor Drusilla."  
  
"How can you say I'm not your childe?" Spike asked. "You're my bloody Sire!"  
  
"I am not either!" Angel denied, jumping to his feet. "I Sired Dru, and Dru Sired you, so you are her childe, her responsibility, and not mine."  
  
"You liar!" Spike accused. "You know bloody well that Dru totally botched up my bloody changing. It was your blood I first craved, your blood I always crave, and your f*cking blood I've never tasted since!"  
  
Angel looked down at the younger vampire in surprise. "What?" he asked. "But, I told Dru I was turning you for her, and she fed you from her own veins during the turning…"  
  
"After I drank from you," Spike pointed out angrily, "and even the blood that she fed me was your blood."  
  
"Yes, well, I had just let her feed from me," Angel agreed, "but surely she transformed it to her own blood before she gave it to you…"  
  
"Not bloody enough, she didn't," Spike responded.  
  
"And you always clung to her," Angel continued to argue, "All those years, calling her the face of your salvation."  
  
"Yeah, I loved her, and when you love someone you hang around," Spike countered, enjoying Angel's cringe at his not-so-veiled reference to Angel's relationship with Buffy. "And Dru was the face of my salvation. She was the one that first noticed me as William, she was the one that saw my potential, and she was the only one I could turn to when you rejected me!"  
  
Angel sank back to the floor, horror showing clearly on his face. He clearly remembered the importance of the childe-Sire bond he had had with Darla in the years before he was cursed with his loosely anchored soul. He had played the part of the alpha male, pretending to be in charge of their group, and Darla had let him because it amused her, but he was always conscious that he be tough enough, cruel enough, to keep Darla happy with him. The psychological torture of his human victims, his obsession in driving Drusilla crazy before changing her, even the fateful episode with the gypsy girl, had been done to impress Darla, his Sire, his everything.  
  
"Don't act all surprised, Angel," Spike growled. "You can't expect me to believe you didn't know…"  
  
"But I didn't…"  
  
"Oh, come on!" Spike exclaimed. "All the times I called you Sire, all the times I approached you for blood, the amused cruelty with which you denied me…" He broke off, slipping to the floor himself.  
  
Angel sighed heavily, his eyes looking more tortured than they had only minutes before when he was brooding about Buffy. "Spike," he began, "it isn't all that uncommon to approach one's grand-Sire for blood, although it is typically a refused request. The Master denied me when I approached him, years before Drusilla was even born, and Darla always denied Drusilla. As for calling me Sire – you know how annoyed Darla would become at Dru's calling her Grand-mama? Well, I – Angelus – would have beaten the blood and snot out of you if you'd called me Grandpa, so of course you called me Sire." Angel paused, thinking, before he continued. "You mean, all those years, you and Dru never…"  
  
"Oh, well, yeah, we fed off each other," Spike exclaimed, "but she was always like a sister to me. Well, a sister I had sex with for over a hundred years, but you know what I mean."  
  
Angel closed his eyes wondering what his next course of action should be. His soul had no answers, so he relied instead on vampire instinct. He let him demon emerge and leapt upon Spike roughly. Spike's eyes widened in surprise but he offered no resistance as Angel grabbed him by his peroxide- blond curls, tilted his head to the side, and plunged his fangs into his throat. Spike gasped, first in pain and then in pleasure at this intimate recognition. Angel drank deeply and roughly as a Sire was expected to. Spike thought maybe he had died and gone to some sort of vampire-heaven when Angel pressed his own wrist to Spike's mouth. 'No wonder Buffy didn't want to leave heaven,' was Spike's last coherent thought before calling forth his demon and biting gently, reverently, into his Sire's wrist for the first time since his changing. 


	5. Chapter 5

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"...remember always that I love you."

Buffy's eyes shot open as the very first rays of morning light hit her pillow. Fragments of a conversation flittered through her mind. 

__

"...remember always that I love you."

The conversation seemed unnatural, as if it had only occurred in a dream. Buffy had trained herself to recall her dreams with crystal clarity, as the Slayer dreams were often prophetic, but this one seemed to dance around her, just out of grasp. She tried to shake the fuzzy feeling in her head, but it refused to nudge. Glancing at her clock, she realized she had time for a shower before she needed to wake up Dawn for school.

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"Why did you cut your beautiful hair?"

'Probably not a prophetic dream,' Buffy thought as she stumbled to the bathroom. 'Prophetic dreams are all death and evil; they don't care about my hair.' She slipped out of the tank top and shorts she had worn to bed, letting them drop to the floor. A quick glance in the mirror turned into a longer inspection of her hair. She had to admit to herself that she regretted cutting it so impulsively. 'The only thing good to come out of that was my accidentally being turned invisible on the way out of the salon,' she thought to herself. 'That was some fun invisible sex!' Buffy allowed herself to ignore the contradictions -- she cut her hair in an attempt to dissuade Spike, and then slept with him the very same day.

She tossed her head, watching the short strands swirl around with the motion. As her hair shifted, the scar on her neck came into view. 

__

"When did Angelus bite you?"

She ran a finger lightly over the raised imprints of fangs, shuddered in the remembrance of that night. In that one night, she had faced the possibility of losing Angel once again, she had stabbed Faith in an attempt to heal him, and she had been painfully drained by Angel when her attempt to retrieve Faith's blood failed. She had thought Angel would be gentle, turning the drinking into some sort of erotic share time -- she had heard about the euphoria then, although she didn't experience it until Dracula's bite. Instead, Angel had been vicious, and the drawing on her veins had been excruciating. 

Wanting to abandon that train of remembrance, she turned her eyes away from the scar and towards the shower. She adjusted the knobs, letting the water run to warm. When she stepped into the spray of water, it was soothing and more than a little sensual. 'I just won't think about that dream,' she told herself, enjoying the feel of the water that caressed her scalp. 'That dream was just bad ramblings from my head.' She reached for her bottle of vanilla-scented shampoo, popped open the cap, and inhaled the sweet fragrance.

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"Sweet, twisted Drusilla."

'Okay, that did not come from my head,' she thought, highly disturbed. 'Drusilla twisted? Definitely. Sweet? Never!' She poured a generous amount of the shampoo into her palm and scrubbed her hair harshly, as if she could wash the strange dream from her mind. Her mind obeyed, at least for a while, and she rinsed her hair and lathered herself from neck to toes with vanilla-scented body wash without any more memories. As she rinsed the soapy substance from her body, she heard another fragment, this one clearly in Spike's voice.

__

"Angelus helped Drusilla turn me."

Buffy froze still, wondering for a moment if Spike was standing right outside the shower curtain. She had heard his voice so clearly... She pulled the edge of the shower curtain aside, peeking out into the steamy room. A shadowy reflection of her face, short dripping hair and all, looked back from the fogged-up mirror, but otherwise the room was empty. Highly agitated, she made a quick end to her shower and dried off. 

Wrapped tightly in a towel, she searched her room for signs of a hiding Spike. "No Spike in the closet," she mumbled. "No Spike under the bed. What the hell is wrong with me?" Convinced that he was gone, she finally dressed. Another glance at the clock told her she was now running late.

"Dawn!" she yelled as she slipped into clean undergarments and relatively clean sweat pants and T-shirt. "You had better be up now!" She stepped into the hallway and knocked loudly on Dawn's door. "Are you up yet?"

Dawn's reply was mumbled, and then the squeaking of mattress springs let Buffy know that Dawn was on her feet. "I'll have some cereal and juice on the table for you," Buffy continued before making the trek downstairs on the quest of coffee.

Minutes later Dawn entered the kitchen. She slipped her coltish frame into a chair and took a large gulp of orange juice before attacking her cereal. "I have a history paper due tomorrow," she told Buffy, who was giving her second cup of coffee worshipful attention. "I want to stop by Spike's crypt after school so he can look it over."

"Can't," Buffy answered automatically. "He's out of town." Buffy put more cream into her coffee and gave her mug a little swirl, watching the patterns the cream made before dispersing.

"Since when?" Dawn asked, upset.

Buffy looked up. "Since when what?" she asked.

"Since when is Spike out of town? I saw him just yesterday!" 

Buffy thought for a moment. 'Why did I say he was out of town?' she wondered.

__

"I'll be leaving Sunnyhell for a few days, but don't concern yourself with my absence..." 

'That stupid dream again,' Buffy thought. "Um, I think he left last night."

"Well, where did he go?" Dawn wanted to know. "When will he be back?"

"I intend to come back, but if I don't, remember always that I love you."

Buffy's stomach did a funny little flip, and she put her coffee down, no longer interested in its caffeine magic. Aloud she said, "What, is that a new Slayer duty? Keep track of Spike? I don't know where he went." She paused, and then continued, softening her tone. "I think he'll be back in a few days."

Dawn gave her a strange look before shrugging, putting her cereal bowl and glass in the sink, and scampering upstairs to finish getting ready. Buffy was caught up in concerns about the dream and worries about Spike, so she barely noticed when Dawn finally left for school. In a sort of daze she made her way to Spike's crypt, wanting to see if he was really gone. His TV and collection of books were all in place, and there was blood in the refrigerator, but his duster and car keys were gone. 

__

"I intend to come back, but if I don't, remember always that I love you."

Now Buffy had to consider that this strange conversation might have really happened, and might have been really important. She laid back on the cool, hard stone of the sarcophagus. 

__

"...don't concern yourself with my absence...

'If this conversation really took place,' she thought, watching motes of dust dance in the hazy sunlight that came in through the high windows, 'then why was Spike asking me all those questions, and why can't I remember answering any of them?'

She allowed all of the bits and pieces she remembered to roll around in her head as she tried to piece together some meaning. Since Spike was really gone, she decided to accept -- for now, at least -- the fragments she could recall as being true. "So Drusilla is more incompetent than I thought, and Angel helped Sire Spike," she muttered to herself. Just one more disturbing connection between her two vampire lovers, past and more recent past, as she didn't plan on returning to Spike's erotic embrace. "Spike left Sunnydale for a few days, and he isn't sure if he'll be able to return." She had mixed feelings about that; it would make her decision to stay away from him a lot more feasible, but Dawn would miss him... and so would she. 

'Nope,' she thought, 'still no meaning.'

Buffy then closed her eyes, clearing her mind, and tried meditating. It seemed strange, trying to reach a meditative state in a vampire's crypt, but she had had years of training from Giles, and sooner than she had expected she was relaxed, her mind opened. More bits of the dream -- or was it a real conversation with Spike? -- came to her conscious mind.

__

"When did Angel bite you?"

"When did Angelus bite you?"

__

"When did my Sire bite you?"

"When were you claimed?"

"Close your eyes now and go to sleep. When you awaken in the morning your free will shall be restored, and this will all seem but a dream."

"Be in me."

Buffy's eyes shot open, bolting upright on the sarcophagus. "The bastard!" she cried. She gripped the hair by her temples, pulling until she felt the roots straining. "The bastard got into my f*cking head!" She remembered Giles' description of his thrall under Drusilla.

__

"Be in me."

She considered smashing up his crypt in retaliation. "He's lucky he left Sunnydale!" she raged, jumping off of the sarcophagus. "When I see him next I'm going to..." The rant went unfinished as the fractured pieces of her enthralled conversation connected to form a finished puzzle, the final picture clear. Spike had enthralled her to find out something specific, something about Angel biting her and her being claimed. "Claimed?" she wondered aloud as she turned to leave the crypt, stepping into the mid-morning sun. "I think we are going to have a Scooby meeting tonight -- after I call Giles!"


End file.
